Mugged by reality at healthcare.gov

As the nation continues to be punished with the president’s baby, the ludicrously misnamed Affordable Care Act, even some of the Chicago Charlatan’s erstwhile supporters are starting to lose faith in him. The rest of us, who saw through that fraud from the start, and tried to warn the country about this catastrophe while there was still time to prevent it… well, let’s just say we’re relieved that the truth, despite being long suppressed, is finally becoming apparent. What Joe Biden called “a big f***ing deal” is turning into a big f***ing headache for the Obama administration.

“The rollout of the insurance exchange that is central to the success of the Affordable Care Act has been nothing short of a disaster. This failure is a double whammy: it puts the future of Obamacare in even greater peril while placing Obama’s case for activist government on life support. If the government can’t build a functioning website to support the most important initiative of the president’s administration, then how can it be trusted to do anything?

“Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told The Wall Street Journal that the botched launch of the $400 million website was ‘another challenge that’s no worse than the near-death experiences’ the health-care law has seen over the past three years. But it is a million times worse, because it’s self-inflicted. This time, Obama can’t blame Republicans.

“The administration had to know it had only one shot to launch the exchanges, and it blew it. The damage it has caused was captured in a Washington Post–ABC News poll released Monday. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed believed the ‘website glitches’ are ‘part of a broader problem with the health care law.’

“What makes it worse is that officials knew they weren’t ready, and they went forward anyway. The Associated Press reported that ‘Website builders saw red flags for months.’ The Washington Post recounted, ‘Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the website to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.’” ―Kirsten Powers,Obama Can’t Blame Republicans This Time

“The burning question about Barack Obama is whether he was simply ‘playing to win’ and therefore lying on purpose, or whether his statements about Obamacare were just another example of, as Obama once put it, I actually believe my own spin, though he used another word.

“‘No matter how we reform healthcare, we will keep this promise to the American people,’ he told the American Medical Association in 2009. ‘If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.’

“No matter how you slice it, that was a lie. As many as 16 million Americans on the individual health insurance market may lose their insurance policies. Just in the last month, hundreds of thousands have been notified by their insurers that their policies will be canceled. In fact, it appears that more Americans may have lost coverage than gotten it since Healthcare.gov went ‘live’ (a term one must use advisedly). And when the business mandate finally kicks in, tens of millions more probably will lose their plans.” ―Jonah Goldberg,Obama’s Big Lie

“It was Bill Daley – accomplished political player, former commerce secretary and, most killingly, former chief of staff of President Obama, who Thursday, on ‘CBS This Morning,’ admitted the scale of the problem. Asked whether Kathleen Sebelius should be fired, he said: ‘To me that’s kind of like firing Captain Smith on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.’

“The Titanic. Some will see his comments as disloyal. Actually they were candid and realistic. Although in fairness, the Titanic at least had three good days, and Edward Smith chose to go down with the ship. …

“Mrs. Sebelius did not show overwhelming confidence in the days before the debut – there was no ‘God himself couldn’t sink this program.’ She repeated her lines in a way that seemed almost furtive, appearing not confident but confused, and almost guiltily stubborn. Her message was almost always the same: There are no icebergs ahead.” ―Peggy Noonan,Obamacare Takes on Water

“For true believing Democrats, the nationalization of the American health care system is the Holy Grail, the mythical chalice of progressivism after which they have quested for half a century; it’s the Philosopher’s Stone they think will alchemically transmute the base metal of the Founding Fathers into the glittering bullion of socialism. Too bad for them ObamaCare is such a bag of rocks. A few cranks on the right suspect that the Affordable Care Act was designed that way by intent, a cumbersome bit of partisan legislation that’s both unaffordable and offers no care, in order to prod the citizenry into clamoring for federal salvation in the form of a single-payer system. But such a plot ascribes to the Obama Administration a certain degree of foresight and planning of which it has thus far shown itself utterly incapable. The more reasonable explanation, the simplest explanation, is that ObamaCare is proving disastrous because its authors are incompetent hacks. And as the days pass and more and more True Believers receive shut-off notices from their insurers or incur premium increases that would make a conscienceless usurer blush, they are beginning to question their faith.” ―Bob Mack,True Believers

“Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Taxes to pay for the bill increased. So far, the Obamacare sign-up website has made going to the DMV seem like a picnic. Businesses are not made more competitive as promised, but cutting back on their full-time employees. The deficit will not go down due to Obamacare.

“Doctors do not welcome the radical changes; many may retire to avoid them. Healthy young adults are not rushing to buy Obamacare plans – at least not once they learn that they will pay a lot for something they use rarely to pay for others who pay little for something they will use constantly.

“All individuals must buy a plan or pay a penalty, while businesses have already been given a one-year reprieve from skyrocketing expenses of the coverage. Congressional and administration staffers who wrote the law, insider businesses that supported it and pet unions that donated for it now all want to be excused from it.

“At a time when the national debt has just hit $17 trillion and Medicare and Social Security are facing impending insolvency, another gargantuan redistributive entitlement does not seem a good way to revive the economy or streamline the nation’s health care.” ―Victor Davis Hanson,Beware the Hidden Costs of Beautifully Misnamed Laws

“It is not the website per se that matters, but its symbolic import. The boast of this presidency was in part that the smart people, the technocrats, were coming to town. These were the people who not only had a progressive agenda, but who would be able to administer things smoothly and efficiently, using only ‘good science,’ transparency, and rational techniques. After all, wasn’t Cass Sunstein, among others, on the O team? We were supposed to learn that the vaunted techniques of the business class set were next to nothing compared to the swift and bold rationalism of the technocrats. …

“And yet when it has come to governing, look what has happened. The President has three signature pieces of legislation: the stimulus package, Dodd-Frank, and the ACA. Forget about Dodd-Frank for now… it doesn’t even have Obama’s name. Whatever one thinks of the objectives of these two big programs, which have brought or aim to bring massive chunks of American life under government control, they have been shocking so far in the incompetence of their administration. Remember the stimulus package? It was pledged that it would move expeditiously to spending on shovel-ready projects. Joe Biden backed by a team or committee of experts was put in place to assure efficient spending on the basis of his mastery of the new category of shovel-readiness. Now think back: that part never really much happened, and it was later acknowledged that shovel ready really didn’t quite mean shovel ready.

“Now we move to the website. The symbol of the incompetence in the roll out is stunning. Where is the ‘smooth,’ the ‘cool’ and the efficient in running things? It would seem that the least gifted of administrators would have checked things out a while ago and begun to exercise a nudge here or there to get things going. …

“The failure in administrative competence is more significant than it seems. It is a blow to the claims of progressive expertise, a blow that is more humorous than serious. And it is humor or ridicule that kills.” ―James Ceaser,Xenophon On the Website Roll-Out

“Sebelius minimizes the website as one small part of Obamacare, but it is central to the exchanges that are, in turn, central to the law. She says that there are three ways to sign up for insurance: through the website and also via the phone and paper applications. But the call centers depend on the website, and if paper were such an efficient alternative to online, Amazon.com would operate by postcard.

“The bottom line is that a law sold on the promise that you can keep your insurance if you like it has almost certainly dumped, or is about to dump, more people off insurance than it has signed up. As insurers leave the individual market for the exchanges and bring their policies in compliance with Obamacare’s new rules, they drop their old individual policies en masse. If people who had been covered under them want to stay insured, they have to go to the nonfunctioning Healthcare.gov.” ―Rich Lowry,Heckuva Job, Kathleen Sebelius

“Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don’t like what they see.

“These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

“Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama’s signature legislation.

“‘This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people,'” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. ‘There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act.’

“Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.‘She said, “I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,”’ Kehaly said.” ―Chad Terhune,Some Health Insurance Gets Pricier as Obamacare Rolls Out

“The irony of the ObamaCare fiasco is not lost on former Democrat staffer Sue Klinkhamer. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democrat colleagues, she wrote:

“‘I spent two years defending ObamaCare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not reelected in 2010 mainly because of anti-ObamaCare anger. When the congressman was not reelected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job.I was upset that because of the healthcare issue, I didn’t have a job anymore, but still defended ObamaCare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.’ …

“As reported by the Chicago Sun Times, three years ago, Klinkhamer’s healthcare premium was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Each year it increased marginally and as of Sept. 1, 2013, it was $291 with a $3,500 deductible. Then, a few weeks ago, she got ‘the letter.’

“‘Blue Cross,’ she said, ‘stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible. … Blue Cross also tells me that if I don’t pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. … Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?’”

“Millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

“Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. …

“The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be ‘grandfathered,’ meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.

“Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, 40 to 67 percent of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, ‘the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.’

“That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans. … Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, ‘if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,’ was still saying in 2012, ‘If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.’” ―Lisa Meyers and Hannah Rappleye,Obama Administration Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance

“President Obama’s legacy may include a stake in the heart of a cherished dream of the progressive left: complete government control of healthcare in America.

“Obama has always wanted a single-payer, government-run healthcare system, and he set out a complicated but achievable path to get to that goal through Obamacare. The eventual failure of Obamacare would set the stage for single-payer healthcare.

“Unfortunately for him, he designed Obamacare to fail in the wrong ways at the wrong times, making it harder, not easier to achieve his goal of completely socialized healthcare. If Obamacare dies an early and spectacular failure, it will be at least another 100 years before the American people will consider government-run healthcare again. …

“Obamacare was supposed to be so utterly complex as to hide the blame for all of its failures, therefore allowing the government and its partners in the mainstream media to place all of the blame on the private insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, technology firms, and anyone that does not work for the federal government. This is where Obama’s plan hit a brick wall, and it has been nothing short of glorious to watch.

“The rollout and website were such huge failures up front that even the old and sick who will tolerate the massive inconvenience of dealing with bureaucrats for endless hours can’t buy coverage. Private insurers will only go out of business if the sick can sign up and the healthy don’t.

“More importantly, the American people were always supposed to blame this catastrophe on the private insurers, not the government. The problem is that the American people are not stupid: they see that a $634 million website run by the government that cannot even link a consumer to a private insurer’s webpage is the fault of the government. It is unlikely that the government and its media partners will be able to spin this example of breathtaking incompetence to avoid any blame, as Obama had initially planned.” ―James Richard Edwards,Obamacare, Designed to Fail, Is Failing Too Soon

“In his weekly radio address, President Obama preposterously pouted that ‘it’s well past the time for folks to stop rooting for [ObamaCare’s] failure,’ with the obvious implication that conservative Republicans are in fact cheering for the pain of the uninsured.

“No, Mr. President, we are not. We are, however, having a delicious moment of schaden-fraud. This is the magnificent validation we are experiencing as all elected Democrats and members of the Jurassic media are fast discovering that the man and the plan they have so arrogantly shoved down our throats — and so naïvely placed their hopes in — are simultaneously being exposed as shams.

“And sham-wow, is it ever cathartic, as we have been called racists, terrorists, hostage-takers, kooks, haters, and stupid for years — all because we deigned to be correct about the biggest legislative boondoggle in American history. Of course, only a few of the Kool-Aid drinkers are admitting this… yet… but we can sense that many of them are panicking on the realization that they might one day have to.” ―C. Edmund Wright,Obamacare Schaden-Fraud

Reblogged this on Catholic Glasses and commented:
Maybe we can send Obama et al to Mars. I hear tell theirs some good golf courses there. If he believes that there’s a bridge in Brooklyn we could sell him. Or he can stay and face treason.